Once we decided that we wanted to send the kids to private school (2020s insanity drove me over the edge) the scalar cost of additional children became a big problem. This could be solved with a Florida style voucher program, but that doesn't exist in most states. My understanding is that Sweden has full school choice (and your schools haven't gone insane like ours). Additional money would go a long way on this issue, and honestly doesn't have to cost anything (just give me back what my school district gets, even a portion of it).
Yes, Sweden has a school voucher system. It is currently not very popular. It is blamed for grade inflation and the ever-sinking results. Schools run by Muslim extremists have also been closed. A couple of decades after the reform, most schools are still public. And voucher schools are not known to be better than the public ones. To the contrary, actually. I thought about sending my kids to the only voucher school within traveling distance for 7th grade, but we decided against it. A few years later the company running that school got a lot of bad reports from the mass media.
I don't say that nothing good came out of the reform. But the baseline seems to be that running schools is difficult.
In the US the public system is terrible and lately they are very political. It wasn't always so acutely bad (at least outside the cities) but its deteriorated fast.
During COVID they engaged in what was essentially child abuse (when they bothered to be open at all).
Lots of states passed vouchers since 2020 and they have been every popular.
As an Ultra-Orthodox Jew, I find your essays fascinating. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that it isn't "one of us" writing.
I do agree that culture is the primary factor, and your essays explain it very well. In fact, for us Orthodox Jews children are very expensive. We pay for the school in private schools. We pay for their weddings and often continue to support them after their weddings. Most of us live in areas where housing is expensive, and a large family needs a large house. These are just some of the expenses we incur in keeping our children sheltered.
I felt a comment on this thread was very accurate in explaining that the key is encouraging our children to be mothers at a young age. In our culture a parent feels that it is their responsibility to marry off their children in their early 20s, even if it costs them a lot. All close male-female relationships outside of marriage and preparation for marriage are banned, so naturally young people feel the need to marry. After marriage we allow for birth control (though we strongly encourage having as many children as possible), but only after a couple has at least one son and one daughter.
I believe that most people who live in a culture that revolves around raising children feel that it is the most fulfilling life and develop a strong desire to have many children.
This is very exciting. I have only read about Ultra-Ortodox Jews in books (mostly Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman). So from this I can make the conclusion that at least some Ultra-Orthodox Jews use the Internet without any restrictions?
For a long time, I have wondered one thing about the Ultra-Orthodox: As you say, many of you live in expensive areas. How do people solve that problem? I mean, earning loads of money is the best solution. But what do people who don't succeed in that do? Do people move to less expensive areas? Do they live under very crowded conditions? What is considered normal among the Ultra-Orthodox regarding how many kids can live in one room, plus-minus?
There are thousands of people in Lakewood with unfiltered smartphones. Most people do have some access to the internet, and most filters, even "kosher" ones allow most of Substack.
Where there is unanimous agreement is to be very careful regarding children's access to the internet. Generally, no parent in the community will allow their children (even teens) to have a social media account or to own a device that has access to the internet.
My 7 children sleep in 2 bedrooms (one for boys one for girls), with one bunkbed in each room. We have an extra bedroom, but they want to sleep together.
>>Generally, no parent in the community will allow their children (even teens) to have a social media account or to own a device that has access to the internet.
Jonathan Haidt would consider you role models! Thinking about it, since Haidt is Jewish too I guess he knows about it.
Sorry, I just noticed your response. It didn't show up in my email inbox and I do have very limited access to internet (either at the local public library or at special "kosher" filtered" kiosks).
I think the greatest misconception people have about the Ultra-Orthodox is that they are monolithic, with their life dictated by rabbis. I live in Lakewood, NJ, the Ultra-Orthodox city of the U.S.A. and all these questions, from restrictions on internet access to how people manage, have about as many answers as there are families in Lakewood.
There are neighborhoods in Lakewood which are very crowded, with thousands of children in a small area, and there are neighborhoods right nearby with mansions. What is fascinating is that even the most crowded neighborhoods are not slums. Even the children from the most impoverished large families have a very low crime rate.
The community is also very close-nit and very giving to one another. There are hundreds of charity and volunteer organizations for every need under the sun. If a family is going through a hard time financially their children will not be expelled from private school and the community will provide help in multiple forms.
There are some communities where housing is affordable. Additionally, most Republican states now have school choice. Hopefully, over time the community will learn to adjust and spread further out.
I do agree that culture more than economics is at play in the fertility crisis. But really, I don't think its culture or economics. I think the biggest part of it is just that most people, particularly women, do not like having children, and birth control lets them avoid it.
Given the option to It's the conservative religious groups who have most children; they are also the most wary about birth control. The Amish don't use it at all, and have the most children of all.
Or looking at the phenomenon from a global perspective, Africa is the only region with high fertility, and African women use very little birth control. Wikipedia has: "Approximately 30% of all women use birth control, although over half of all African women would use birth control if it were available.[7][8] The main problems that prevent the use of birth control are limited availability (especially among young people, unmarried people, and the poor), high cost, limited choice of birth control methods, lack of knowledge on side-effects, spousal disapproval or other gender-based barriers, religious concerns, and bias from healthcare providers." Culture and economics are both there, but what matters is the way they impact use of contraceptives.
Looking back at the West, when birth control first came on the scene, it was fairly new, and being childfree was a bit odd. There was still some stigma there, and people felt uncomfortable limiting their births so strongly. Now that birth control is ubiquitous, people are not merely thinking about money or even about existing children; they're thinking about the nausea, about their waistline, about the hours of crying, about the smelly diapers, about the tantrums, about the responsibility.
If science found a way for us to stop going to the bathroom, nobody would ever poop, either.
You certainly have a point. Having children is risky and unpleasant in itself. Especially I think the prospect of labor pains can deter people. I have loosely thought of writing a a post under the title "The case for not torturing new mothers". Because I clearly think there is such a case to make.
That being said, the Amish use contraception. Otherwise all Amish groups would have total fertility rates of 10, because they marry early and marriage is almost universal (to the extent that there are men). The Schwarzentruber Amish, who have explicit rules against hormonal contraception, have a fertility rate of almost 10. Other, more liberal groups have as few as 5 children per couple. I also read somewhere that their fertility sinks and rises with business cycles just like that of the mainstream population. So basically they know how to limit their number of children. They just use that knowledge less because the cost/benefit ratio of having children is different for them (then one part of the benefit of having children might be the social status you get from pretending that you don't know how to control your fertility).
NZ currently has a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.8. During covid it dipped to 1.68. Prior to the 2010's it had always been (through the 20th century) at or above 2.1 (Replacement-Level Fertility).
So until very recently it has been quite normal to grow up with a number of siblings and parents have expected to have at least 2 kids. However, it does feel as though there has been step changes in our culture with regards to attitudes about family size.
In the 1980's I remember being struck by a statement from a sister-in-law that she had "done her duty" after her 2nd child (implying there would be no more). This seemed to reflect both a permissive attitude to birth control (she was on the pill) and a new reality of dramatically declining/low infant mortality.
Fast forward to the 1990's when my wife started having kids. Before marrying we felt we would have 'a bunch'. My wife thought 4, as both she and I had each had 3 other siblings.
On her 3rd child people began to remark on the number. When the 4th arrived the Pentecostal (church) mothers at school asked/welcomed her into their circle. This rather surprised her as she is a high Anglican atheist. It also happened to me at work, though I didn't realise at the time as I worked with upper middle class civil engineers who mostly had 2 or at most 3 kids and weren't church goers, but one of the supervisors and several other field staff became friendlier. ie 'large' families like ours were now associated with 'family first' low church and working class values.
I have wondered what drove that culture change. The 90's coincided with a steep rise in University education and a steady increase in women's age at marriage and age at first birth, though having a first baby at say 30 still leaves plenty of years in which to conceive say 3 more so I doubt the decline (relative to earlier decades) in number of children per family was due to a reducing time window for conceiving them. Alternatively, the '90s followed our (NZ's) conversion from a quite conservative/socialist society to a market oriented liberal/feminist one. My feeling is that something about that change made securing a child worthy relationship more difficult and made children seem more 'expensive' (harder work/less rewarding). At least for the middle classes.
A year after our 3rd arrived the government brought in (in 2001?) a quite substantial 'tax credit' for each child as an effort to alleviate 'child poverty'. Perhaps, too it was becoming concerned about below replacement birth rates among European New Zealanders (Maori/Polynesians were the other major ethnic group and had birth rates above replacement). Our last child was born under the new policy. Though it didn't play any role in our choice to have 4 kids, it certainly made things financially easier as they grew up (kids get more expensive as they get older).
NZ has always been an immigrant society. Mostly Anglo Europeans (currently about 60% of population, Maori are 15%), though Polynesians migrated in large numbers in the 70s through 90s (now 10% of the population). While in the past 20 or so years there has been substantial East Asian and South Asian immigration into NZ so that they make up about 15% of the population.
Currently about 30% of NZers were not born here and I wonder how these immigrants have affected our attitudes to family. Polynesians are very family oriented and still have slightly above replacement fertility rates. Maori too. South Asian families are also family oriented but have TFR (total fertility rate) comparable to Anglo European NZers. While East Asians have lower fertility rates, though still higher than if they had stayed in East Asia.
It's a classic collective action problem - if everyone stopped "Thinking of the children", the society would be better off and fertility would rise. However, if only YOU stop thinking of YOUR children, you are putting your child at risk of falling behind all other children who are well "thought of" and cared for by their parents. Everybody wants SOMEONE to fix the society, but it's natural not to risk your own children's future for the cause.
I'm in the Camp Culture as well, though I think it's less about meaning and more about status. People have few children because status is elsewhere. In traditional societies, the relationship between status and fertility was a virtuous cycle: high status -> better changes of survival & reproduction -> more children -> even more status. Now, people can have lots of sex without reproduction thanks to contraception.Traditional ways of signalling elite status such as conspicuous acquisition and consumption of goods and services and leisure activities (Veblen's Leisure Class theory) have become available to the working and middle classes forming the bulk of the society (this is where Rob Henderson's luxury belief theory originated from). Since having children stands in the way of status games popular in the society, having a lot of them is associated with low status.
> However, if only YOU stop thinking of YOUR children, you are putting your child at risk of falling behind all other children who are well "thought of" and cared for by their parents.
That presumes that parental care, support, and attention is very important. While it does help, the general picture painted by a century of psychological research is that factors outside the home are what make the difference - the shared environmental component to most traits and life outcomes is small. Add to this the likely importance of siblings who provide direct assistance as well as friendship networks, and I'd be surprised if there were a significant loss of status, wealth, or general success for children of fecund parents.
It is not really about whether it really helps, it's about whether the people believe it does.
As it's a belief thing, it's a Pascal's wager type of situation: a relatively small investment (intensive care, support and attention) provides a chance for an uncertain, yet significant prize in the future (children winning at life, or at least not falling behind). Plus, if many people around you share the same belief, the social proof/community/social norm dynamics come into play.
Could be the elite college aspect? (in places where such institutions exist). If getting into an elite college actually helps, and you need to tick certain boxes to do that, then the ability to drive a child to violin lessons might be crucial.
Even in America, elite colleges only seem to be somewhat important for the success of a person. But this seems to be the problem in South Korea, where there is only one road to success (at least more so compared to in the West). People can only tick the boxes for a very limited number of children.
I think the "elite" Red Queens Race is the most salient factor. In the US, at least, the arms race for Ivy schools ALREADY starts at "we need to get on the waiting list 6 months before birth to get precious Jayden into the right pre-school and then grind furiously and non-stop for 18 years, or their chances at getting into Harvard are *ruined!*"
What incentive would work in this world? This is difficult to fix at the Ivy level, which will always have many more applicants than spots and has no reason to participate, but the various states have R1 universities in them.
The state of California, for example, has the well-regarded UC system, and could guarantee spots to selected elite parents based on pretty simple criteria. Say both of you have a prestigious degree and/or have paid >$XXX,XXX amount in taxes to California over the years. Issue those parents a guaranteed non-transferrable slot in the UC system (inclusive of the good ones like UC Berkeley) to any of their kids as long as their kid scores above Y SAT / ACT score. Keep issuing slots for every $XXX,XXX in taxes they continue to pay.
You can extend this to ANY R1 university in any state, or more broadly to any state-controlled well-regarded university in any country, with whatever threshold makes sense. Poof! The educational arms race has had some of the pressure taken off of it, and elites (however you define them) are directly incentivized to have more kids.
The schools only have so many spots? Well legislate that you have to use some of those $XXX,XXX tax dollars to expand the universities then, this is a self-perpetuating system!
NZ doesn't have selective Universities. They do have selective schools/departments/courses. For example Medical Schools, Vet School, Engineering, Law, etc. Med School has recently reduced emphasise on grades and increased the role of ethnicity (there are few qualified Maori/Polynesian Dr.s). This despite about 1/3 of qualified doctors emigrating and being replaced by immigrating doctors. Otherwise, selection is almost totally based on marks achieved in the first year. There are also opportunities for direct entry dependant on High School grades. If a student achieves a B+ average through their first 3 years they are eligible to enrol for an honours (4th) year.
Given NZ's population of only 5Mn, most people know most other people at least in their area of expertise. So there is actually a lot of implicit selection because. in reality, the difficulty of courses varies widely. This makes getting highly regarded internships or practice placements pretty important for future opportunities. Also at post grad level some thesis advisers have the status to be highly selective of whom they take on.
One thing I note in Japan (where I live) is that families with 2 or more children are way more common in the countryside. I think a significant chunk of that is that cities are bad places to be parents because there's so many other things to do that distract from settling down and deciding to have children.
Plus the expectations for what each child should have and the basic infantilizing of children as agentless blobs who must be watched over at all times makes parents unwilling to have too many because they can't meet those standards.. I think the same applies in a lot of the rest of the developed world too.
The fix, it seems to me, is to teach girls that motherhood is a good thing and that it should be prioritized over having a career rather than (as currently) vice versa. You can have kids and a career but you'll have more kids and be more happy if you have the kids first
This is fairly good advice for anyone living anywhere; my wife always talks about this. If your fertility goal is a modest 2-3 children, it's possible to have them right away, and then go to university or start a career in your 30's.
I planned to do that! I thought I was super-smart. When I was 20, I didn't know what to do. I thought that statistically I will have two children anyway, so why not have them now while I'm thinking of what to work with?
The plan failed because I couldn't appreciate the prospect of full-time work once I had children. Also, time became more valuable when I had children. I was no longer in the mood to waste my reading time on university courses with the only purpose to show a prospective employer that I can read.
So instead of going to university, I had another child when I approached 30. And then another one. I never planned to have many children. I just tried to apply the children first, career then strategy, and failed.
That is a very difficult question. On the one hand, I'm extremely happy that I happened to have six children. On the other hand I would very much like to have a job that matches my capabilities.
Most of all I wish that society was different. The selection processes for advanced jobs are far from perfect.
Reading these kinds of comments, you always strike me as being much more socialized into your birthplace than I am. Forget selection processes being far from perfect, everything in America is crazy, nothing makes sense, there are more guns than people, random nut jobs wander into the country, nobody understands metric; nobody's even heard of a roundabout. The largest city in the Bay Area where the Rationalists roam is a public defecation hot spot of global renown, and so, rationally, what was there to do but make a map of it? https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/updated-the-san-francisco-poop-map
Nah, even if I say I would like society to be more rational, I don't say I believe it is possible to change it in that direction without a minor revolution.
Edit: But yes, I was rather socialized into my birthplace at 20. Sweden is as crazy as America, but the craziness is more of the under-the-surface kind. It takes longer to discover.
As far as I know, cities have always been population sinks. I once saw an anonymously written comment calling them IQ shredders. I thought that was fairly spot on.
To be fair, the economic activity and growth *enabled* by that concentrated IQ shredding has basically lifted the majority of the world out of poverty, and raised life expectancy and standards of living everywhere, so it's not entirely wasted.
I am reminded of this scene in the documentary "Free Solo" where the girlfriend goes to great lengths to convince Alex Honnold that their relationship won't interfere with his climbing. Then later they have a daughter and he decides he can't keep doing such risky stuff.
The reason this is relevant is that maybe better than telling girls to delay their careers is for prospective grandparents to step in and say "you can have both! we will help out and having children won't hurt your career at all!". Then after they have some kids they might decide they would rather stay at home after all.
That is also possible, my brother in law and his wife live with his parents and the parents absolutely helped with childcare (one child is now graduated from college and on her own the other is about to skip college and get a job so no longer needed)
Once we decided that we wanted to send the kids to private school (2020s insanity drove me over the edge) the scalar cost of additional children became a big problem. This could be solved with a Florida style voucher program, but that doesn't exist in most states. My understanding is that Sweden has full school choice (and your schools haven't gone insane like ours). Additional money would go a long way on this issue, and honestly doesn't have to cost anything (just give me back what my school district gets, even a portion of it).
Yes, Sweden has a school voucher system. It is currently not very popular. It is blamed for grade inflation and the ever-sinking results. Schools run by Muslim extremists have also been closed. A couple of decades after the reform, most schools are still public. And voucher schools are not known to be better than the public ones. To the contrary, actually. I thought about sending my kids to the only voucher school within traveling distance for 7th grade, but we decided against it. A few years later the company running that school got a lot of bad reports from the mass media.
I don't say that nothing good came out of the reform. But the baseline seems to be that running schools is difficult.
In the US the public system is terrible and lately they are very political. It wasn't always so acutely bad (at least outside the cities) but its deteriorated fast.
During COVID they engaged in what was essentially child abuse (when they bothered to be open at all).
Lots of states passed vouchers since 2020 and they have been every popular.
As an Ultra-Orthodox Jew, I find your essays fascinating. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that it isn't "one of us" writing.
I do agree that culture is the primary factor, and your essays explain it very well. In fact, for us Orthodox Jews children are very expensive. We pay for the school in private schools. We pay for their weddings and often continue to support them after their weddings. Most of us live in areas where housing is expensive, and a large family needs a large house. These are just some of the expenses we incur in keeping our children sheltered.
I felt a comment on this thread was very accurate in explaining that the key is encouraging our children to be mothers at a young age. In our culture a parent feels that it is their responsibility to marry off their children in their early 20s, even if it costs them a lot. All close male-female relationships outside of marriage and preparation for marriage are banned, so naturally young people feel the need to marry. After marriage we allow for birth control (though we strongly encourage having as many children as possible), but only after a couple has at least one son and one daughter.
I believe that most people who live in a culture that revolves around raising children feel that it is the most fulfilling life and develop a strong desire to have many children.
I too have felt the "one of us" phenomenon with Tove's writings, and I am LDS (Mormon).
I appreciate the comment.
This is very exciting. I have only read about Ultra-Ortodox Jews in books (mostly Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman). So from this I can make the conclusion that at least some Ultra-Orthodox Jews use the Internet without any restrictions?
For a long time, I have wondered one thing about the Ultra-Orthodox: As you say, many of you live in expensive areas. How do people solve that problem? I mean, earning loads of money is the best solution. But what do people who don't succeed in that do? Do people move to less expensive areas? Do they live under very crowded conditions? What is considered normal among the Ultra-Orthodox regarding how many kids can live in one room, plus-minus?
A more direct response.
There are thousands of people in Lakewood with unfiltered smartphones. Most people do have some access to the internet, and most filters, even "kosher" ones allow most of Substack.
Where there is unanimous agreement is to be very careful regarding children's access to the internet. Generally, no parent in the community will allow their children (even teens) to have a social media account or to own a device that has access to the internet.
My 7 children sleep in 2 bedrooms (one for boys one for girls), with one bunkbed in each room. We have an extra bedroom, but they want to sleep together.
>>Generally, no parent in the community will allow their children (even teens) to have a social media account or to own a device that has access to the internet.
Jonathan Haidt would consider you role models! Thinking about it, since Haidt is Jewish too I guess he knows about it.
Sorry, I just noticed your response. It didn't show up in my email inbox and I do have very limited access to internet (either at the local public library or at special "kosher" filtered" kiosks).
I think the greatest misconception people have about the Ultra-Orthodox is that they are monolithic, with their life dictated by rabbis. I live in Lakewood, NJ, the Ultra-Orthodox city of the U.S.A. and all these questions, from restrictions on internet access to how people manage, have about as many answers as there are families in Lakewood.
There are neighborhoods in Lakewood which are very crowded, with thousands of children in a small area, and there are neighborhoods right nearby with mansions. What is fascinating is that even the most crowded neighborhoods are not slums. Even the children from the most impoverished large families have a very low crime rate.
The community is also very close-nit and very giving to one another. There are hundreds of charity and volunteer organizations for every need under the sun. If a family is going through a hard time financially their children will not be expelled from private school and the community will provide help in multiple forms.
There are some communities where housing is affordable. Additionally, most Republican states now have school choice. Hopefully, over time the community will learn to adjust and spread further out.
Does that answer all your questions?
I do agree that culture more than economics is at play in the fertility crisis. But really, I don't think its culture or economics. I think the biggest part of it is just that most people, particularly women, do not like having children, and birth control lets them avoid it.
Given the option to It's the conservative religious groups who have most children; they are also the most wary about birth control. The Amish don't use it at all, and have the most children of all.
Or looking at the phenomenon from a global perspective, Africa is the only region with high fertility, and African women use very little birth control. Wikipedia has: "Approximately 30% of all women use birth control, although over half of all African women would use birth control if it were available.[7][8] The main problems that prevent the use of birth control are limited availability (especially among young people, unmarried people, and the poor), high cost, limited choice of birth control methods, lack of knowledge on side-effects, spousal disapproval or other gender-based barriers, religious concerns, and bias from healthcare providers." Culture and economics are both there, but what matters is the way they impact use of contraceptives.
Looking back at the West, when birth control first came on the scene, it was fairly new, and being childfree was a bit odd. There was still some stigma there, and people felt uncomfortable limiting their births so strongly. Now that birth control is ubiquitous, people are not merely thinking about money or even about existing children; they're thinking about the nausea, about their waistline, about the hours of crying, about the smelly diapers, about the tantrums, about the responsibility.
If science found a way for us to stop going to the bathroom, nobody would ever poop, either.
You certainly have a point. Having children is risky and unpleasant in itself. Especially I think the prospect of labor pains can deter people. I have loosely thought of writing a a post under the title "The case for not torturing new mothers". Because I clearly think there is such a case to make.
That being said, the Amish use contraception. Otherwise all Amish groups would have total fertility rates of 10, because they marry early and marriage is almost universal (to the extent that there are men). The Schwarzentruber Amish, who have explicit rules against hormonal contraception, have a fertility rate of almost 10. Other, more liberal groups have as few as 5 children per couple. I also read somewhere that their fertility sinks and rises with business cycles just like that of the mainstream population. So basically they know how to limit their number of children. They just use that knowledge less because the cost/benefit ratio of having children is different for them (then one part of the benefit of having children might be the social status you get from pretending that you don't know how to control your fertility).
NZ currently has a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.8. During covid it dipped to 1.68. Prior to the 2010's it had always been (through the 20th century) at or above 2.1 (Replacement-Level Fertility).
So until very recently it has been quite normal to grow up with a number of siblings and parents have expected to have at least 2 kids. However, it does feel as though there has been step changes in our culture with regards to attitudes about family size.
In the 1980's I remember being struck by a statement from a sister-in-law that she had "done her duty" after her 2nd child (implying there would be no more). This seemed to reflect both a permissive attitude to birth control (she was on the pill) and a new reality of dramatically declining/low infant mortality.
Fast forward to the 1990's when my wife started having kids. Before marrying we felt we would have 'a bunch'. My wife thought 4, as both she and I had each had 3 other siblings.
On her 3rd child people began to remark on the number. When the 4th arrived the Pentecostal (church) mothers at school asked/welcomed her into their circle. This rather surprised her as she is a high Anglican atheist. It also happened to me at work, though I didn't realise at the time as I worked with upper middle class civil engineers who mostly had 2 or at most 3 kids and weren't church goers, but one of the supervisors and several other field staff became friendlier. ie 'large' families like ours were now associated with 'family first' low church and working class values.
I have wondered what drove that culture change. The 90's coincided with a steep rise in University education and a steady increase in women's age at marriage and age at first birth, though having a first baby at say 30 still leaves plenty of years in which to conceive say 3 more so I doubt the decline (relative to earlier decades) in number of children per family was due to a reducing time window for conceiving them. Alternatively, the '90s followed our (NZ's) conversion from a quite conservative/socialist society to a market oriented liberal/feminist one. My feeling is that something about that change made securing a child worthy relationship more difficult and made children seem more 'expensive' (harder work/less rewarding). At least for the middle classes.
A year after our 3rd arrived the government brought in (in 2001?) a quite substantial 'tax credit' for each child as an effort to alleviate 'child poverty'. Perhaps, too it was becoming concerned about below replacement birth rates among European New Zealanders (Maori/Polynesians were the other major ethnic group and had birth rates above replacement). Our last child was born under the new policy. Though it didn't play any role in our choice to have 4 kids, it certainly made things financially easier as they grew up (kids get more expensive as they get older).
NZ has always been an immigrant society. Mostly Anglo Europeans (currently about 60% of population, Maori are 15%), though Polynesians migrated in large numbers in the 70s through 90s (now 10% of the population). While in the past 20 or so years there has been substantial East Asian and South Asian immigration into NZ so that they make up about 15% of the population.
Currently about 30% of NZers were not born here and I wonder how these immigrants have affected our attitudes to family. Polynesians are very family oriented and still have slightly above replacement fertility rates. Maori too. South Asian families are also family oriented but have TFR (total fertility rate) comparable to Anglo European NZers. While East Asians have lower fertility rates, though still higher than if they had stayed in East Asia.
It's a classic collective action problem - if everyone stopped "Thinking of the children", the society would be better off and fertility would rise. However, if only YOU stop thinking of YOUR children, you are putting your child at risk of falling behind all other children who are well "thought of" and cared for by their parents. Everybody wants SOMEONE to fix the society, but it's natural not to risk your own children's future for the cause.
I'm in the Camp Culture as well, though I think it's less about meaning and more about status. People have few children because status is elsewhere. In traditional societies, the relationship between status and fertility was a virtuous cycle: high status -> better changes of survival & reproduction -> more children -> even more status. Now, people can have lots of sex without reproduction thanks to contraception.Traditional ways of signalling elite status such as conspicuous acquisition and consumption of goods and services and leisure activities (Veblen's Leisure Class theory) have become available to the working and middle classes forming the bulk of the society (this is where Rob Henderson's luxury belief theory originated from). Since having children stands in the way of status games popular in the society, having a lot of them is associated with low status.
A good analysis of how status seeking lowering fertility is an evolutionary mismatch: https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2055/aop/article-10.1556-2055.2022.00028/article-10.1556-2055.2022.00028.xml
> However, if only YOU stop thinking of YOUR children, you are putting your child at risk of falling behind all other children who are well "thought of" and cared for by their parents.
That presumes that parental care, support, and attention is very important. While it does help, the general picture painted by a century of psychological research is that factors outside the home are what make the difference - the shared environmental component to most traits and life outcomes is small. Add to this the likely importance of siblings who provide direct assistance as well as friendship networks, and I'd be surprised if there were a significant loss of status, wealth, or general success for children of fecund parents.
It is not really about whether it really helps, it's about whether the people believe it does.
As it's a belief thing, it's a Pascal's wager type of situation: a relatively small investment (intensive care, support and attention) provides a chance for an uncertain, yet significant prize in the future (children winning at life, or at least not falling behind). Plus, if many people around you share the same belief, the social proof/community/social norm dynamics come into play.
OK, but I think the prize you're talking about is an illusion. People who care about "winning at life" reproduce below replacement and cease to exist.
Could be the elite college aspect? (in places where such institutions exist). If getting into an elite college actually helps, and you need to tick certain boxes to do that, then the ability to drive a child to violin lessons might be crucial.
Even in America, elite colleges only seem to be somewhat important for the success of a person. But this seems to be the problem in South Korea, where there is only one road to success (at least more so compared to in the West). People can only tick the boxes for a very limited number of children.
I think the "elite" Red Queens Race is the most salient factor. In the US, at least, the arms race for Ivy schools ALREADY starts at "we need to get on the waiting list 6 months before birth to get precious Jayden into the right pre-school and then grind furiously and non-stop for 18 years, or their chances at getting into Harvard are *ruined!*"
What incentive would work in this world? This is difficult to fix at the Ivy level, which will always have many more applicants than spots and has no reason to participate, but the various states have R1 universities in them.
The state of California, for example, has the well-regarded UC system, and could guarantee spots to selected elite parents based on pretty simple criteria. Say both of you have a prestigious degree and/or have paid >$XXX,XXX amount in taxes to California over the years. Issue those parents a guaranteed non-transferrable slot in the UC system (inclusive of the good ones like UC Berkeley) to any of their kids as long as their kid scores above Y SAT / ACT score. Keep issuing slots for every $XXX,XXX in taxes they continue to pay.
You can extend this to ANY R1 university in any state, or more broadly to any state-controlled well-regarded university in any country, with whatever threshold makes sense. Poof! The educational arms race has had some of the pressure taken off of it, and elites (however you define them) are directly incentivized to have more kids.
The schools only have so many spots? Well legislate that you have to use some of those $XXX,XXX tax dollars to expand the universities then, this is a self-perpetuating system!
NZ doesn't have selective Universities. They do have selective schools/departments/courses. For example Medical Schools, Vet School, Engineering, Law, etc. Med School has recently reduced emphasise on grades and increased the role of ethnicity (there are few qualified Maori/Polynesian Dr.s). This despite about 1/3 of qualified doctors emigrating and being replaced by immigrating doctors. Otherwise, selection is almost totally based on marks achieved in the first year. There are also opportunities for direct entry dependant on High School grades. If a student achieves a B+ average through their first 3 years they are eligible to enrol for an honours (4th) year.
Given NZ's population of only 5Mn, most people know most other people at least in their area of expertise. So there is actually a lot of implicit selection because. in reality, the difficulty of courses varies widely. This makes getting highly regarded internships or practice placements pretty important for future opportunities. Also at post grad level some thesis advisers have the status to be highly selective of whom they take on.
Sounds much like Scandinavia: There is selection, but it is mostly hidden.
One thing I note in Japan (where I live) is that families with 2 or more children are way more common in the countryside. I think a significant chunk of that is that cities are bad places to be parents because there's so many other things to do that distract from settling down and deciding to have children.
Plus the expectations for what each child should have and the basic infantilizing of children as agentless blobs who must be watched over at all times makes parents unwilling to have too many because they can't meet those standards.. I think the same applies in a lot of the rest of the developed world too.
The fix, it seems to me, is to teach girls that motherhood is a good thing and that it should be prioritized over having a career rather than (as currently) vice versa. You can have kids and a career but you'll have more kids and be more happy if you have the kids first
This is fairly good advice for anyone living anywhere; my wife always talks about this. If your fertility goal is a modest 2-3 children, it's possible to have them right away, and then go to university or start a career in your 30's.
I planned to do that! I thought I was super-smart. When I was 20, I didn't know what to do. I thought that statistically I will have two children anyway, so why not have them now while I'm thinking of what to work with?
The plan failed because I couldn't appreciate the prospect of full-time work once I had children. Also, time became more valuable when I had children. I was no longer in the mood to waste my reading time on university courses with the only purpose to show a prospective employer that I can read.
So instead of going to university, I had another child when I approached 30. And then another one. I never planned to have many children. I just tried to apply the children first, career then strategy, and failed.
Well do you regret it? sounds like you discovered that children are more fulfilling than a professional career
That is a very difficult question. On the one hand, I'm extremely happy that I happened to have six children. On the other hand I would very much like to have a job that matches my capabilities.
Most of all I wish that society was different. The selection processes for advanced jobs are far from perfect.
Reading these kinds of comments, you always strike me as being much more socialized into your birthplace than I am. Forget selection processes being far from perfect, everything in America is crazy, nothing makes sense, there are more guns than people, random nut jobs wander into the country, nobody understands metric; nobody's even heard of a roundabout. The largest city in the Bay Area where the Rationalists roam is a public defecation hot spot of global renown, and so, rationally, what was there to do but make a map of it? https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/updated-the-san-francisco-poop-map
Nah, even if I say I would like society to be more rational, I don't say I believe it is possible to change it in that direction without a minor revolution.
Edit: But yes, I was rather socialized into my birthplace at 20. Sweden is as crazy as America, but the craziness is more of the under-the-surface kind. It takes longer to discover.
As far as I know, cities have always been population sinks. I once saw an anonymously written comment calling them IQ shredders. I thought that was fairly spot on.
To be fair, the economic activity and growth *enabled* by that concentrated IQ shredding has basically lifted the majority of the world out of poverty, and raised life expectancy and standards of living everywhere, so it's not entirely wasted.
Indeed. I guess it remains to be seen how badly those shredded DNA segments will be missed.
I am reminded of this scene in the documentary "Free Solo" where the girlfriend goes to great lengths to convince Alex Honnold that their relationship won't interfere with his climbing. Then later they have a daughter and he decides he can't keep doing such risky stuff.
The reason this is relevant is that maybe better than telling girls to delay their careers is for prospective grandparents to step in and say "you can have both! we will help out and having children won't hurt your career at all!". Then after they have some kids they might decide they would rather stay at home after all.
You mean he no longer climbs higher than say a 9m fall?
That is also possible, my brother in law and his wife live with his parents and the parents absolutely helped with childcare (one child is now graduated from college and on her own the other is about to skip college and get a job so no longer needed)